humbled that such a confession should have to be made. Can you furnish me with any hints which may help me in the cultivation of Christian love?

C.-I fear my advice will not be of much value, but it will be a pleasure to give you a helping hand.

1st.-Remember it is the will of Jesus, that you should possess this love. There is no room, therefore, for hesitation. The attainment must be made. And it is surprising how difficulties are surmounted under the pressure of necessity. And, besides, it cannot be doubted that He will impart sufficient strength to obey His commands. A withered arm could be raised at His bidding-a dead man could come out of his grave when He said 'Lazarus, come forth.' 'All things are possible to him that believeth.' 'I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me.'

2nd. Consider your own imperfections. It is a great hindrance to assume our own blamelessness. It is always well to look at home. Whenever you are inclined to uncharitableness, reflect on your own failings. A person with a diseased eye sees objects distorted and discoloured, and is long before he suspects his own infirmity. It was the self-righteous man who despised others. It was the servant who owed his master ten thousand talents that took his fellow-servant by the throat because he owed him five hundred pence. Christ has said, 'Pull out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote out of thy brother's eye.' 'Let him that is without fault cast the first stone at her.'

3rd.-Be assured the characters of your brethren are good on the whole. There may be defects. To err is human. And so there are spots in the Bun. You remember the petty critic spoken of by a popular preacher a few months ago. He went to inspect a magnificent painting. It consisted of a group of human figures. The artist bad thrown his whole soul into it. The subject was a thrilling one, and the connoiseurs stood and gazed upon the picture with wonder and awe. Our critic entered the room and surveyed in every aspect this splendid work of

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art, but there was no light enkindled in his eye, no glow of pleasure in bis heart, not a syllable of approval dropped from his tongue. All the grandeur was lost to such a little soul, and with a clouded brow and a low muttering tone he said, 'There's a defect in one of the toes.' Now there are those who look with the same narrow and carping spirit on the characters of their Christian friends, and I put it to you, Flavius, whether it is possible for persons to love who are enslaved by such a vile habit of fault finding. How would the early disciples have fared in the hands of such censors? They would have tabooed Thomas, and found a thousand faults with Peter, and John would not have been to them as he was to his Master, the beloved disciple.' No; give the most imperfect brother his due, and you will often find under a rough exterior a very precious gem; and if you could look into his heart you would find how earnestly he struggles against evil, and strives after a resemblance to Jesus, and breathes daily the aspiration, ‘I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.'

4th.-Unite with them as frequently as possible in their worship. I never find myself more truly one with my Christian brethren than at the mercyseat. Our spirits blend so sweetly there. Oh how near we come together when we approach our Lord. We cannot think of dissimilarity when we bow in the holy place, and realize the Divine presence, and confess our sins, and ask for mercy and grace to help us, and say Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' Very often have I found in the act of social worship that the affection that was smouldering in my heart has been fanned into a flame, and I have felt what it has been to 'love with a pure heart fervently.' 'Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.'

5th.-Act out very promptly your benevolent emotions. Do not delay. It will be a calamity to let them cool. At once translate them into kind deeds. The wax will receive impressions when melted which you will in vain try to produce after the cooling process has

DIVINE REVELATIONS.

'God, who at sundry times and in divers

manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto as by his Son.'-Heb. i. 1, 2.

MAJESTY is the distinctive mark of this epistle. It opens with a high movement of thought. Its theme is the grandest that can engage the human intellect. It sets forth the Divinity, authority, and offices of the Son of God. He is higher than the angels, greater than the prophets. He is the Antitype of Old Testament types-the life and power of all sacrifice. Melchisedec, Moses, and Aaron were but the passing shadows of Him. Christ was the subject of Revelations, and the medium of Revelation.

The

I. The first stage of Divine Revelation, or the Dawn of Spiritual Light. Gradual progressiveness is a characteristic of the Divine procedure. same hand unlocks the beauty of the rose, and unfolds the blessings of Revelation. The dawn precedes the day in the spiritual world as well as in the natural. (1) The period mentioned in time past,' or formerly. This period embraces many ages. Notable epochs. Deluge, Erodus, Babylonish Captivity, John Baptist. (2) The persons concerned. Unto the fathers by the prophets.' Persons to whom, Fathers.' Ancestors or progenitors of the Jewish nation. Persons in or through whom,' Prophets.' (ev designates the element in which the Aale takes place, and holds therefore its proper place. Al.) The prophets were the organs or vehicles of the Divine Revelations. Each unfolds some special feature of the Divine character and will. Moses, David, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, &c., &c. (3) The form or method adopted; 'at sundry times, or in manifold portions, and in divers manners. In form it was fragmentary and incomplete. Stones but no temple. In method it was various. Visions, Dreams, Voices, Angel's visits, Indwelling Spirit.

II. The second stage of Divine Revelation, or the Day of Spiritual Light. The rays of scattered light are gathered together into an orb of glory. The Son of God is the Sun of the world. The stones come together in

us

the temple of truth. (1) The period mentioned these last days.' Perhaps during the last dispensation. (2) The persons concerned-spoken unto who lived in the days of Christ and by His Son';-to whom Us'—those since-to you, me, Christ has a message from God to every man; in or through whom, Son. This word is the key of the epistle. Christ is the consummation of Divine Revelation. 'Brightall the fulness, &c. He who hath ness of His glory.' In Him dwelleth seen Me hath seen the Father.' The form and method are complete in Him.

FIGURE USED

APOSTLE PAUL.

H.

OLIVES-A

BY THE

'If some of the branches be broken off, and

thou, being a wild olive tree, weit graffed in among them, and with them partaketh of the root and fatness of the olive tree, boast not against not the root, but the root thee.-Rom. xi. 17, 18.

the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest

'For thou wert cut out of the olive tree which

is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree, &c.-Rom. xi. 24.

Now here is my difficulty, and the exact point of enquiry: the olive, you say, (and so says the Apostle) is wild by nature, and it must be grafted by the good before it will bear fruit; but here the apostle speaks of grafting the wild into the good, not the good upon the wild.

True, he does; but observe, he says expressly that this is contrary to nature, as it really is. I have made particular enquiries on this point, and find that in the kingdom of nature generally, certainly in the case of the olive, the process referred to by the apostle never

wild, and, as the Arabs say, it will conquer the wild; but you cannot reverse the process with success. If you insert a wild graft into a good tree, it will conquer the good. It is only in the kingdom of grace that a process thus contrary to nature can be successful; and it is this circumstance that the apostle has seized upon, and with admirable tact, to magnify the mercy shown to the Gentiles, by grafting them, a wild race, contrary to the nature of such operations, into the good olive of the church, and causing them to flourish there, and bring forth fruit unto eternal life. The apostle lived in the land of the olive, and was in no danger of falling into a blunder in founding his argument upon such a circumstance in its cultivation.Thompson.

The image which the apostle here employs is a very vivid one. The Gentiles had been grafted in upon the Jewish church, and had caused this decayed tree to revive and flourish. But still the apostle means to hold in check any exultation of the Gentiles on this account. He reminds them, that after all they are not the stock but the grafts; that the root and fatness of the good olive has been transferred to them, only because they have been grafted into it.—Stuart.

THE PUBLICANS.

THESE men were so called because they were gatherers of the publicum, or state revenue, who were commonly Roman Knights, and farmed the taxes in companies. This occupation was not held in disesteem by the Romans. Besides the publican, there were inferior officers, freedmen, provincials, and the like, who did the lower work of the collection, and probably greatly abused the power which of necessity was left in their hands. They were commonly stationed at frontiers, at gates of cities, on rivers, at havens. The Greeks hated them for their rudeness, their frauds, and their oppressions. But the Jewish publicans were still more hateful to their countrymen, as traitors to the cause of God,

sided with the Romans, the enemies and the oppressors of the theocracy, and now collected for a heathen treasury that tribute, the payment of which was the evident sign of the subjection of the people of God to a foreign yoke. Of the abhorrence in which they were held there is abundant testimony; no alms could be received from their money-chest, nay, it was not even lawful to change money there; their evidence was not received in courts of justice; they were put on the same level with the heathen, (to keep which in mind adds an emphasis to Luke xix. 9,) and no doubt, as renegades and traitors, were far more abhorred than even the heathen themselves.

POMEGRANATES.

THERE are several kinds of pomegranates in Syria. In Jebaah, or Lebanon, there is a variety perfectly black on the outside. The general colour, however, is a dull green, inclining to yellow, and some even have a blush of red spread over a part of their surface. The outside rind is thin but tough, and the bitter juice of it stains everything it touches with an undefined but indelible blue. The average size is about that of the orange, but some of those from Jaffa are as large as the egg of an ostrich. Within, the grains' are arranged in longitudinal compartments as compactly as corn on the cob, and they closely resemble those of pale red corn, except that they are nearly transparent, and very beautiful. A dish filled with these grains' shelled out is a very handsome ornament to any table, and the fruit is as sweet to the taste as pleasant to the eye. They are ripe about the middle of October, and remain in good condition all the winter. Suspended in the pantry they are kept partially dried through the whole year.

The flower of the pomegranate is bell or tulip shaped, and is of a beautiful orange red, deepening into crimson on some bushes. There is a kind very large and double, but this bears no fruit, and is cultivated merely for its brilliant blossoms, which are put forth profusely during the whole summer,

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and they were reproduced in the temple, upon the network that covered the chapiters on the top of Jachin and Boaz'-those noble pillars of brass,— two hundred pomegranates, in rows, round about. Solomon, of course, adorns his Song of Songs with allusions to this beautiful and pleasant fruit.— Land and the Book.

THE CLEARING OF THE

CLOUDS.

THERE is nothing in what has befallen or befalls you, my friends, which justi fies impatience or peevishness. God is inscrutable but not wrong. Remember, if the cloud is over you, that there is a bright light always on the other side; also, that the time is coming, either in this world or the next, when that cloud will be swept away, and the fulness of God's light and wisdom poured around you. Everything which has befallen you, whatever sorrow your heart bleeds with, whatever pain you suffer, nothing is wanting but to see the light that actually exists, waiting to be revealed, and you will be satisfied. If your life is dark, then walk by faith, and God is pledged to keep you as safe as if you could understand everything. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall adide under the shadow of the Almighty.

These things, however, I can say with no propriety to many. No such comforts or hopes belong to you that are living without God." You have nothing to expect from the revelations of the future. The cloud that you complain of will indeed be cleared away, and you will see that, in all your afflictions, severities, and losses, God was dealing with you righteously and kindly. You will be satisfied with God and with all that He has done for you; but alas! you will not be satisfied with yourself. That is more diffi

cult, for ever impossible! And I can conceive no pang more dreadful than to see, as you will, the cloud lifted from every dealing of God that you thought to be harsh, or unrighteous, and to feel that, as he is justified, you yourself are for ever condemned. You capacity, your education, your health, can no more accuse your birth, your your friends, your enemies, your temptations. You still had opportunities, convictions, calls of grace, and calls of blessing. You are judged according to that you had, and not according to that you had not. Your mouth is eternally shut, and God is eternally clear.-Dr.

Bushnell.

TAKE HEED WHAT YE HEAR.*

THERE is such a thing as foolhardy adventure into an enemy's country. Religious falsehood sometimes comes in such a shape as to stimulate the curiosity of the unwary, as the fruit of the tree of knowledge tempted Eve. Sometimes it is the vehicle which is attractive. It may be elegant style, it may be romance, it may be closely knit argumentation, it may be popular eloquence. The union of several such fascinations may invite the youthful student to taste the poisonous clusters, and acquire the taste for doubts and cavils. The most seductive and cunning argument against future retribution which our age has produced, is contained in a poem of high talent. The name and fame of some great heretical preacher, or some orator who